Celebrity Gathering in NY Against Gender-Apartheid a Success

At a gala event sponsored by the Feminist Majority Foundation and Glamour Magazine, over 300 celebrities joined with human rights advocates Monday at the Forrest Ballroom of New York city's W Hotel to speak out against the terrible abuses women are suffering under Taliban military rule in Afghanistan.

Twenty-one year-old Maryam Shams, a refugee, recounted her own violent encounters with the Taliban militia as she and her friends tried to defy their edicts by maintaining an underground library of banned books, and gathering in public spaces. Hawa Ghaus, FMF's Afghanistan project associate, shared horrific stories from a recent survey expedition. Afghan refugees in Pakistan described to her massacres, executions, beatings, detentions, suicides, ethnic cleansing, religious and sectarian violence, rapes and gender abuse.

1/27/2016 Taiwan Elects First Woman President - In a landslide victory, the leader of Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Tsai Ing-wen won the country's presidential election, becoming the first woman in Taiwan's history to hold the position.
Emphasizing her party's commitment to maintaining Taiwan's independence from China, Tsai won over young voters eager to usher in a political changing of the guard following some 70 years of dominance by the pro-Chinese unification party, the Kuomintang (KMT), chaired by presidential opponent Eric Chu. . . .